, Germaine Cornelissen2 and Franz Halberg2
(1)
Department of Chronomics & Gerontology, Tokyo Women’s Medical University Medical Center East, Arakawa-ku, Tokyo, Japan
(2)
Halberg Chronobiology Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Abstract
Humanity needs transdisciplinary science for spirituality assessment as a critical step to optimizing ethics. Genetics has shed light on the biosphere, technology upon the noosphere, in which, the achievements of the information age notwithstanding, no obvious spinoff for morality is yet apparent.
A scientific optimization may become possible in ethics to the extent to which any reproducible since cyclic features of spirituality and of criminality become measurable. Should either the “good” or the “bad” or both be found to be at least passively influenced by cyclic physical environmental factors, as is putatively the case, these aspects of behavior may eventually become actively manipulable, perhaps utilizable for human survival.
Toward this goal, we have focused elsewhere on outcomes as different as religious motivation, if not spirituality, criminality, and atrocity, and on the underlying dynamics as states at least partly within the brain and in the brain’s relations with the circulation of blood, the heart, and the broad neuroendocrines.
We introduce in this chapter that chronomics has already mapped time structures in religious behavior that can lead to a study of underlying geographic/geomagnetic latitude-associated mechanisms.
Keywords
Chronobiologic ambulatory blood pressure monitoringTime structures in space-terrestrial weatherChrono-cloud systemNatural and social cataclysmsEnvironmental-biospheric coperiodismsChronouspheresThis paper is a posthumous work of Professor Franz Halberg, prepared in cooperation with Germaine Cornelissen, Lyazzat Gumarova, Francine Halberg, Waldemar Ulmer, Weihong Pan, Rita Jozsa, Ram B Singh, Jarmila Siegelova, Yoshihiko Watanabe, Shiyu Hong, Jinyi Wu, Othild Schwartzkopff, Hans Wendt, and Kuniaki Otsuka.
This report with a backbone based on self-surveillance whenever possible by chronobiologic ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (C-ABPM) summarizes a lifetime’s search for controls (cycles) along different time scales (chronobiology and chronomics). My endeavors in health care started with successfully fighting an epidemic of typhus (supporting material). I acted in the steps of Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky without knowing this in this context and in many other ways in which I was in the position of Molière’s M. Jourdain like most of my contemporaries: “Par ma foi! il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose [chronobiology] sans que j’en susse rien, et je vous suis le plus obligé du monde de m’avoir appris cela” (My goodness, for over 40 years I’ve spoken prose [chronobiology/chronomics]?! I’m most grateful to you in all the world for telling me so!) It is good for all of us, at any age, to learn that we are in the sun’s atmosphere and affected by it in many ways, some detailed herein.
I backtrack to my days in Boston (1948–1949), when I used 2.8 mg of cortisone in a test that, with chronobiology in Minnesota, could be done with one microgram. In the interim, I have had help by very many and should have more coauthors here who made this summary and a more extensive bio-bibliography in Folia anthropologica (2012; 12: 5–134) possible. Earl E. Bakken, the developer of the first implantable cardiac pacemaker, who was there from the beginning in Minnesota, celebrates his 89th birthday on January 10, and I trust he will welcome seeing Larry A. Beaty continue what he started as an engineer, serving medicine with a view of prehabilitation as well as rehabilitation. Many others are coauthors in the appended recent bibliography and/or in earlier publications available from halbergchronobiologycenter.umn.edu.
This summary of personalized chronouspheres based on C-ABPM is dedicated to pioneers in self-assessment, with best wishes for continued healthy productivity, to Miroslav Mikulecky, emeritus head of internal medicine at Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia, who as professor of internal medicine wrote a textbook of inferential statistics for his medical students, had organized a series of meetings at which he documented lunisolar associations in clinical medicine, and has demonstrated a seleno-solar (double tidal) rhythm in his own cardiac function, complementing his fellow countryman Jan Evangelista Purkinje’s contributions, also on himself, by self-study.
It is also dedicated to Ram Bahadur Singh, professor of cardiology at Halberg Hospital and Research Institute, Moradabad, India, and president emeritus of the International Colleges of Cardiology and of Nutrition, who excelled in doing on himself an optimization of timing exercise, showing that chronobiology and chronomics can be of particular use in developing areas.
It is further dedicated to Kuniaki Otsuka, President, Daini Hospital, Tokyo Women’s Medical University, who led me to glocality in space that required a complement in time, who realized in two Japanese cities the monitoring by C-ABPM of the elderly and who plans on the first clinical department of chronomics complementing the many chronobiology and sleep disorder clinics worldwide, including cost-effective focus on the cosmos in health care.
It is dedicated as well to Robert B. Sothern (the coauthor of a fine textbook on biological rhythms to which he added independent scholarship and objective quantification) and to his parents, Samuel B. and the late Margaret I. Sothern. Their family autorhythmometry allowed the concomitant demonstration of changes with age in the para-annual region of the spectrum with interindividual differences in timing of the (concomitantly recorded) transitions from dominance of the signature of the calendar year, that is, from weather on earth to the prominence in physiology of periods found in solar magnetism as near-transyears and in interplanetary magnetism as far-transyears, ending with the absence of a detectable calendar-year component with greatly advancing age. It seems noteworthy that an association of human mentality with helio- and geomagnetism was found in the language of frequencies in the infradian range of a novel transdisciplinary spectrum of cycles in us, many but not all matching cycles around us, some free-running, insofar as this terminology, for which Earl E. Bakken is co-responsible, applies to a partly endogenous component that coexists, in several cases examined, with other spectral components.
I also fondly remember many late friends and coauthors, in particular Frederic C. Bartter of Bartter syndrome, Director of the Clinical Center at NIH, who self-measured blood pressure until a lethal stroke, and Howard Levine, professor of medicine at the University of Connecticut and chief of medicine at the New Britain [Conn.] General Hospital whom I met while I fought a typhus epidemic in Wels, Upper Austria, while he was on the staff of a US Army field hospital, and who practiced a battery of self-measurements until the very day of his death from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, setting in this way and many others, an example for all of us.
Unawares, we swim in a magnetic sea of weather in space
Which with rain and shine on earth is in a continuous race.
Components of both competitors in the spectrum abound
With amplitudes that differ in one or the other round;
Sometimes only some photics or only some nonphotics are seen;
In sudden cardiac death in Minnesota near and far transyears are keen.
The calendar year, lost for sudden death in the icebox of the nation,
Is found further south at a North Carolina, USA station.
Phenomena interact at more than one geographic site globally
Wrangling here and there, now and then, in space and time, locally.
Hence analyzing everything in segments and in its entirety
Requires a conceptual and methodological temporo-spatial glocality.
Everywhere in the biosphere there are aeolian cycles galore;
Structures in time as in space unfold more and more.
Chronomics and genetics are inextricably interdigitated;
From monitoring oneself multi-decadal cycles originated.
Famous poets, physicians and historians emerge with Mikulecky’s semimillennians
Complementing Vernadsky’s noosphere and Chizhevsky’s undecennians,
Develop them into a time-structured chronousphere;
“Know thyself” and learn how you fare in the sun’s atmosphere.
Accompanying our best wishes for the now-past holidays
With delays we summarize working/fun goals of our ways:
Personalized and generalized chronouspheres are facts, not fiction
In physics as in the biosphere, yet beyond any single discipline’s jurisdiction.
Self- and others’ surveillance has the chronousphere as the yield
Against ignorance of what the cosmos does to us a shield.
The chronousphere, the time structured realm of the mind,
Could instill love, remove hate, and prevent us from flying to our cosmos blind.
This is how complementary art and science and concern about well-being began
And ever since a unified science and culture remains the goal of woman and man.
23.1 Preamble
In keeping with Lord Kelvin’s “to measure is to know” [1], in retrospect, I have been measuring what I could and trying to render measurable what as yet was not measurable: Omnia metire quæcumque licet et immensa ad mensuram redige. With Professor Robert Sonkowsky’s (of Classics at the University of Minnesota) advice on nomenclature, I soon inserted tempestive before redige to indicate that time is critical in any measurement. Next, further quantification of the indispensability of multiple time scales in what we measure and what happens more broadly became apparent: “Measure, in a partial system, everything pertinent that is measurable and render measurable what is pertinent but as yet is not measurable, as simply as possible, but not simpler, in time and space, globally and locally, i.e., glocally, and hence meaningfully, taking into account chronomic maps, a described and quantified complementary system” [Omnia propria ex systemate partiali metire quæcumque licet et propria immensa, quam simplicissime sed non simplicius, ad mensuram tempestive et ergo significative redige, reddens rationem tabulae chronomicae ad systema complementare descriptum et quantificatum] [2]. Spatiotemporal glocality applies as a concept and as a method. In space, we best consider, beyond terrestrial, an inadvertent cosmic “globalization.” (To “think globally, act locally,” we add “in keeping with what occurs invisibly yet with major effects on us, cosmically.” What affects us unknowingly in space-time is being deciphered in a new language of periods, τs, or frequencies, 1/τs.) For this purpose, we need analyses not only of entire data series (globally, i.e., of the longest available) but also of sections systematically varied in length (locally in time). In so doing, we find cycles in us that lead us to environmental coperiodisms and vice versa and can start analyzing the consequences of the environmental change and possibly effects unknowingly exerted by us on our habitat. Thus, we arrive, i.e., at a personalized sphere of the mind, which “sleeps” each day but is not cyclically inactive during each (sleep) rest span, while also following other photic and thermic cycles like those of the day and the year, with what I try to introduce and document here, an ongoing invisible competition among photics and nonphotics.
What is new is the measurability of nonphotic cycles, characterized by nonstationarities in space and time, such as, among others, the natural near week(s) and its (their) harmonics and subharmonics, the sun’s near-27-day rotation around its axis, competing lunar periods, the solar flares’ ~5-month pattern, the geomagnetic half year, the societal as well as solar calendar week, solar magnetism’s slightly (by days or weeks) or greatly (by months, in the case of solar wind speed) longer than yearly spectral components (near- and far-transyears), as well as circabiennial (i.e., once every 2 years), parasemidecadal, decadal, multidecadal, semimillennian, and even myriadennian components (Fig. 23.1a). One or more of these nonphotics wrangle with and can replace the photic year, albeit more rarely the societally and environmentally usually synchronized biological day. Climate cycles of 50 or 60 years [3] have biospheric counterparts, i.e., in human anthropometry, stroke incidence, and economics, confirming, extending, and qualifying Kondratiev’s contributions by their uncertainties. Cycles of about 500 years found by Miroslav Mikulecky and Emil Pales in the emergence of prominent historians, poets, and physicians on different continents, prevailing at a time when there was no intercontinental communication, suggest a cosmic influence on special human minds [4–6]. The scope of these findings is validated and extended in our meta-analyses of coperiodic changes in climate, tree rings, and international battles, including periods of ~500 years (Fig. 23.1b, c), a glance at a generalized chronousphere [7]. Following the example of Santorio Santorio (1561–1636), who discovered insensible perspiration by meticulously monitoring his weight (Fig. 23.1d), longitudinal monitoring of vital signs is helping our understanding of influences from space-terrestrial weather.
Fig. 23.1
(a) We are there (part of galaxies) and here (on earth), with multifrequency cycles in us and around us near and far. Biological cycles tend to have environmental counterparts. Some cycles detected in biology prompted their discovery in the environment. A near-transyear in solar magnetism recorded by terrestrial telescopes was found by us after its discovery by C-ABPM in an elderly man and in the excretion of steroidal metabolites of another man and even in the oxygen production of a giant unicell. We found a near-week in terrestrial magnetism earlier as a coperiodism of a societally desynchronized free-running near-week in steroidal metabolite excretion. Vice versa, a far-transyear of about 1.3 years in solar wind speed and an about-154-day periodicity in solar flares led to biospheric counterparts in the human blood circulation in health and in incidence patterns of disease. A transdisciplinary spectrum of coperiodisms thus evolved as the backbone in time of human science, art, and even broader culture. As humanity starts to intentionally alter the crust of the earth, the cycles provide a perspective in time to, among others, Vernadsky’s sphere of the mind, rendering it into a generalized chronousphere, accumulating by transfer from books, journals, and museums to the Internet. Can we systematize the cycles and render them into an alerting system to prevent personal catastrophes and to understand and eventually prevent or evade societal and natural cataclysms, respectively? © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (b) About-500-year cycles in the emergence of outstanding minds: physicians (top) and historians and poets (bottom). © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (c) Circasemimillennian periods aligned with other roughly congruent cyclic features, among others, as parts of a generalized chronousphere: a transdisciplinary spectrum of cycles in international battles, tree growth, and climate. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (d) Important findings can be made by longitudinal monitoring, as shown by Santorio Santorio who discovered insensible perspiration by carrying out all his activities on a scale hung from the ceiling of a room in his house
23.2 A New Language of Frequencies
Interindividual differences in personalized chronouspheres differ for MESORs (rhythm-adjusted means) vs. 24-hour (FH and YW) or 7-day (WRB) double amplitudes (2As in Fig. 23.2a), as they also differ among variables, within and among organ systems. As to the time structure of a clinically healthy man, RBS, multidecadals modulate, in a set of 11 different variables monitored for 4 decades, the characteristics of his circadian rhythms (Fig. 23.2b, c). There seems to be a selective assortment of RBS’ decade-long cycles with respect to those in the environment (Fig. 23.2d). The 3-month to 1.9-year range of a spectrum of shared frequencies (Fig. 23.2e–h) reveal that odds ratios of the association of mentality with either interplanetary or earth magnetism more than match those of the (in physics) well-accepted association of interplanetary geomagnetism (Fig. 23.2h) [8].
Fig. 23.2
(a) Inter- and intraindividual differences among periods and their uncertainties, CIs (95 % confidence intervals) found in chronobiologically interpreted ambulatory blood pressure and pulse monitoring by two men (FH and YW) and once-daily measurements of the same variables and body weight by a third man (WRB), separately for MESORs and for double 24-hour (FH and YW) or 7-day (WRB) amplitudes (2As): parts of personalized chronouspheres, revealing inter- and intraindividual and inter- and intra-variable and even inter-rhythm characteristics (MESOR, Midline-Estimating Statistic Of Rhythm, vs. amplitude) differences – selective assortments (cf. also Fig. 23.2b) © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (b) Personalized self-measured and self-rated chronousphere of Robert B. Sothern (RBS): illustration of intraindividual acongruences and congruences, the latter revealed by overlapping CIs (95 % confidence intervals) of periods in the multidecadal spectral region, separately for time series consisting of MESORs (upper 11 rows) and of 24-hour amplitudes (lower 11 rows). SBP, systolic blood pressure; DBP, diastolic blood pressure; PP, pulse pressure; HR, heart rate; Temp, oral temperature; BR2m, breathing rate (2 minutes); VIG, self-rated vigor; TE1m, 1-minute time estimation; PF, peak (expiratory) flow; Mood, self-rated mood; EyeH, eye-hand coordination; horizontal bars have 95 % confidence intervals of nonlinearly estimated periods © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (c) Another view of RBS’ acongruences and congruences, the latter revealed by overlaps of CIs (95 % confidence intervals) of periods, shown as horizontal bars, some within the width of the symbol giving the point estimate of the period, replotted from Fig. 23.2b. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (d) Selective assortment in RBS of heart rate with Wolf numbers’ paratridecadal component and of blood pressure with sunspot (didecadal) bipolarity. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (e) Para-annual congruences found in RBS, with environmental magnetism, solar wind speed (SWS), an approximation of interplanetary magnetism, and the antipodal geomagnetic index (aa). © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (f) An anticipated influence of the nonphotic environment (gauged by SWS and aa) on human mentality, gauged by 1-minute time estimation, was assessed by means of the congruence of periods of their spectral components (defined by overlap of the 95 % confidence intervals of the periods, in the frequency range of one cycle in 2.5 years to three cycles per year). The biological data stem from 40 years of self-ratings by RBS. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (g) An anticipated influence of the antipodal index of geomagnetic disturbance (aa) and of solar wind speed, i.e., of the nonphotic environment on human psychophysiology, was assessed by means of the congruence of periods of their spectral components (defined by overlap of the 95 % confidence intervals of the periods, in the frequency range of one cycle in 2.5 years to three cycles per year) (see also Fig. 23.2d–f). The biological data stem from 40 years of self-measurements of oral temperature (Temp), systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and heart rate (HR) and of ratings of mood and vigor and the time estimation of 1 minute by counting (1MTE), performed about 6 times a day by a clinically healthy man, RBS (J Appl Biomed 2011; 9: 63–102, J Appl Biomed 2011; 9: 1–34). © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (h) Congruences (assessed by means of odds ratios based on the noncentral hypergeometric distribution) found for 1MTE and for several other variables self-measured by RBS more than equal that of the known association of helio- and geomagnetism (bottom, last column on right of dashed vertical line in blue). Mental functions (full red) show numerically higher congruence than somatic functions (green). Among the latter, systolic blood pressure (SBP) is most responsive, constituting a proxy for the mental functions. P-values are based on the noncentral Fisher hypergeometric distribution, with 95 % confidence intervals computed by Fisher’s exact test, used since the null hypothesis was rejected in some yet not all cases. © Halberg Chronobiology Center
We are trying to build a slowly growing edifice of transdisciplinary coperiodisms as a chronousphere (from Gk chronos = time, in our case cycles, the Attic Gk nous = mind, and Gk sphairos = sphere, globe). In “chronousphere,” we use “nous” for portmanteauing, instead of the equivalent “noos,” along with “chronos” and “sphairos.” We build upon the concepts of the biosphere of Eduard Suess, of hominization of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and of a noosphere by him, Edouard le Roy, and Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky, who, like others, used the derivation of “noosphere” from “noos” (also “mind” in Greek), recognizing the need for a sphere of the human creative mind or broader culture that, as did the atomic age, changes the physical environment. Vernadsky, Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, and Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky were also pioneers of cosmism, extrapolating beyond the sphere of available data yet eventually leading the Soviet Union to space flight. Critics [9] include questionable [10] as well as objective yet guarded [11] supporters and overwhelmingly strong confirmers on a novel data batch [12]. We honor Chizhevsky’s genius by meta-analyses of invaluable data he collected such as those, among others, in Fig. 23.3a–c, prepared by Lyazzat Gumarova and follow-ups on his work in using glocal methods for analysis, including wavelets for orientation (Fig. 23.3d, e) as an addition to (but not as a replacement of) combined global and gliding spectra, aligned with serial sections [13].
Fig. 23.3
(a) Different cycles, given in years with their CIs (95 % confidence intervals) in parentheses, can characterize the same noncommunicable (bottom) or communicable (top) diseases in various, sometimes neighboring geographic locations, as is the case for diphtheria and cholera (top) and for myocardial infarction and sudden cardiac death (bottom). Cycles (in years) detected in croup, diphtheria, and relapsing fever in five European nations between 1860 and 1910, in 104 years of incidence of cholera in Russia (1823–1926), and mortality from cholera in India (1901–1961) show a spectrum of cycles that are probably a feature of atavistic built-in decadal and multidecadal resonance, the importance of which Chizhevsky recognized, perhaps too succinctly as an echo of the sun. Analyses of communicable diseases by Lyazzat Gumarova. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (b) Numbers in this graph indicate periods (in years) with their CIs (95 % confidence intervals) found by Lyazzat Gumarova’s meta-analyses in Chizhevsky’s compilation of statistics. Note that an about-11-year cycle found in Moscow coexists with other cycle lengths in other geographic locations in Russia, a fact requiring a glocal concept and, critically, a spatially (as well as temporally) glocal procedure. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (c) Meta-analysis by Lyazzat Gumarova of a cycle in malaria in data published by Chizhevsky. A period seen by his naked eye has a very wide uncertainty as apparent from the 95 % confidence interval in the linearly-nonlinearly extended cosinor analysis. The data published by Chizhevsky (upper right) encouraged him to write about this periodicity. His genius, based on inspection, was right: a periodicity could be validated by rejecting the zero-amplitude assumption by Marquardt’s conservative approach, albeit the period’s CI is very wide, prompting the question: Should one always provide an uncertainty? Even Carl Friedrich Gauss, the king of mathematicians, relied in some cases on inspection alone [14]. In most cases, however, the meta-analysis used and advocated herein and more generally is critical to check the impression gained by the naked eye, of a possible periodicity, and allows more rigorous comparisons with other data, notably when a multidecadal length of the cycle prevents insistence on its replication. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (d) Putative time- and geographic area-varying reflection of past and/or present solar variability, dependent perhaps on terrestrial interactions, seen here only for Denmark by wavelet analysis of incidence patterns of two infectious diseases (pooled data) centuries ago when they were rampant (top row), of Wolf sunspot numbers (middle), and of the antipodal geomagnetic index aa (bottom), with peaks indicated by color (key), and corresponding periods listed in the spectrum (right, next to the color key) © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (e) Cross-wavelet transforms show a strong association of the incidence of two infectious diseases (pooled) with WN and aa at a period of about 11.7 years (within the cone of influence). Coherence (right) is also found within the cone of influence at periods of about 10.4 and 11.0 years. These periods are near those validated for the incidence of diphtheria and croup by the extended nonlinear cosinor (not shown). There are also statistically significant differences, some within the cone of influence between the associations (among others) of rampant pandemics with solar vs. earth magnetism in other geographic areas (not shown) © Halberg Chronobiology Center
In referring to a personal chronousphere, we aim to complement the generalized sum total of humanity’s contributions to culture, including science, thus far, to which each individual can contribute measurements if not concepts or rules, the latter the privilege of a few outstanding and, as such, outlying personalities (e.g., Fig. 23.1b, c) [7]. We emphasize that in a sphere of the mind, above all, one need to know oneself in keeping with the Greek gnothi seauton (perhaps Pythagoras’) precept above the portico of the temple at Delphi and the Latin cognosce te ipsum. We can try to explore our mental and emotional state of well-being to start with by monitoring blood pressure and heart rate that can be recorded automatically as one goes and soon analyzed automatically, thanks to Larry A. Beaty (Fig. 23.4a), as markers (documented as such for mental functions such as mood, vigor, and the estimation of one minute; Fig. 23.2e, h).
Fig. 23.4
(a) Larry A. Beaty, de facto honorary professor of the Minnesota branch of the project on The BIOsphere and the COSmos (BIOCOS). As such, and as a member of the Phoenix Study Group, composed of volunteering members of the Twin Cities chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (http://www.phoenix.tc-ieee.org), he demonstrated by dint of engineering that affordable blood pressure monitors can be constructed at a cost below $100. He represented us this year at an international meeting in Moscow (Space Weather Effects on Humans in Space and on Earth, 4–8 June 2012), at one in Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia (4th International Conference on Advanced Cardiac Sciences: King of Organs, 18–21 November 2012), and at a national IEEE meeting in Houston, Texas. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (b) Illustrative parametric (left) and nonparametric (right) approach bracket a sphygmochron (middle) from a MESOR-normotensive man with circadian hyper-amplitude-tension (CHAT), a condition characterized by the 24-hour amplitude of blood pressure (BP) exceeding the upper 95 % prediction limit of clinically healthy peers matched by gender and age. A sample “sphygmochron” (center) illustrates how results are being reported. The numerical report consists of two parts labeled “characteristics” (parametric results) and “indices of deviation” (nonparametric results). Under “parametric results,” a mathematical model of a smooth curve is fitted to the data to assess their circadian variation. The “MESOR” is the average value around which values fluctuate. It is very similar to the mean value, but yields more reliable results when the data are not collected at precisely regular intervals, and has a smaller error when the data are equally spaced. The “double amplitude” is a measure of the predictable change occurring within a day. The “acrophase” is a measure of the time when overall high values are likely to recur each day. For each of the three characteristics (“parameters”), the participant’s value is compared to a range of acceptable values, derived from data provided by clinically healthy people of the same gender and age group as the participant. In this case, the double amplitudes of SBP and DBP exceed the reference limits, leading to the diagnosis of CHAT. Under “nonparametric results,” the participant’s data are compared by computer with time-specified reference values, also derived from chronobiological archives on clinically healthy subjects matched by gender and age. For this analysis, all data are stacked over an idealized 24-hour day. Whenever a given person’s profile exceeds the limits of acceptability of peers, the data are marked as being excessive or deficient. The “percentage time of elevation” reports the relative incidence of excessive values during a 24-hour day. It is common to have occasional high values, but in the example herein, there is reason for concern. The next item, the time of excess, becomes useful when drug treatment should be timed prior to the peak in excess. Since excessive values may either be barely above the limit or be very much higher than the limit, the “area under the curve” delineated by the values when they exceed the limit and this limit itself conveys the severity of excess. Empirically, it has been shown that excess up to about 50 (mmHg × hour during 24 hours) may still be acceptable and accountable for by daily worries and/or physical activities. In the case summarized, the HBI is 60, in bold, and, if confirmed in the next 7/24 profile, a reason for treatment © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (c) The Phoenix Group of volunteering electrical and electronic engineers from the Twin Cities chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (http://www.phoenix.tc-ieee.org) is planning on developing an inexpensive, cuffless automatic monitor of blood pressure and on implementing the BIOCOS concept of an international website and data center (www.sphygmochron.org) for the analysis of time series collected with these instruments aligned with information, among others, from space weather stations, epidemiological data from health departments, statistics on crime rates from police departments, and trends in economics for research in a unified science and art. Concept validation by such varied data collection and analysis is found in some of the appended recent bibliography © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (d) The many dividends visualized by Dean and Professor Yinjing Guo, with Dr. Jinyi Wu and Bing Wu, from a chronomic cloud system with a data center for service in self-surveillance to individuals by an as-one-goes lifetime’s strain test and as background for caregivers and for research on understanding, preventing, and/or avoiding or evading natural and human-made cataclysms on an even broader scale by mining epidemiologic, sociologic, and environmental variables, utilizing current technology for smart homes and smart transportation, the latter examining, e.g., a driver’s alertness by physiological monitoring as well as trying to take over some of the driver’s tasks © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (e) Operations plan for 21-day/8-rat Biosatellite: sequence of lighting regimens to be instituted after lift-off at times determined by results from “as-you-go” analyses of the data. Design prompted by financial restraints: the government’s contractor (General Electric) had to provide a system for eight rats that were to be in extraterrestrial space for 21 days. Apparently, the extension of the hardware to last for another day and/or to include another rat had an added cost of $1 million (before inflation) in a budget of $100 million (so we were told). The hybrid design [15] was the result. The study never flew, but it served to develop physiological telemetry of core temperature with motor activity at first and a design with many applications on earth as well. The same as-one-goes analyses serve for assessing rhythm characteristics in experimental work on earth and in the clinic in order to detect seemingly spontaneous rhythm alterations and those after changes in routine or drug treatment. Further demonstrations of a hybrid design combining meta-analyses done longitudinally on individuals and transversely (with but one observations/individual) on one group are shown elsewhere © Halberg Chronobiology Center
More specifically, we can seek to measure automatically a personalized sphere of the human mind by the extent of rhythm alteration in C-ABPM analyzed as one goes, not only for personal health when data are analyzed by sphygmochron (Fig. 23.4b) but also as a way to learn about space-terrestrial weather influences on our physiology. It seems desirable to update one’s recent state of mind on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, whether or not one can extend one’s horizon, to become an outstanding creative mind – we wish in more individuals and more frequently than a few every 500 years, now that intercontinental communication is possible. One’s experience and acquired knowledge about oneself and others can be placed into the context of information on past and present events more generally, i.e., into a pool of information in a generalized chronousphere on the Internet. This double (personalized and generalized) chronousphere could become a basis for trying to improve one’s health and that part of the environment in which one lives and beyond, as far as oneself and/or others can reach by glocal pooling of contributions by ever-improved human minds. Contemporary technology (Fig. 23.4c, d) permits the processing of a monitored personalized chronousphere, notably when combining longitudinal records from different individuals in hybrid designs such as those used in a Biosatellite program (Fig. 23.4e), as planned by Dr. Jinyi Wu and Bing Wu with Yinjing Guo, dean and professor, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Shandong, China.
Concerning the designs proposed by Dean Guo and more generally, Larry Beaty wrote:
The services layers typically associated with cloud computing (infrastructure, platform, and application) are implemented with components that can build upon each other. Building upon and specializing a set of available computing resources or services to a specific domain is often referred to as constructing a ‘vertical solution’ by developers of large computing systems; block diagrams and design drawings used by engineers are often arranged vertically, with infrastructure components at the bottom of the drawing and the most abstract functionalities of multiple domain-specific applications at the top. We can view the collection of services specific to chronobiologically-based healthcare made available by a cloud computing system as one such vertical solution.
In addition to construction of vertical solutions, services can be specialized for multiple types of users within a specific domain, or for subsets of the functions needed within the domain.
The infrastructure-as-a-service capability of a chronobiology cloud system (networking, data storage, raw compute capability) could be made available to technology organizations that want to build systems with those building blocks. Data schemas that encourage the capture, transmission, and storage of chronobiologically/chronomically-useful data that might otherwise be ignored by system developers could underlie networking and data storage infrastructure services. Useful schema components might include timestamps relative to an individual’s ‘local body time’ (i.e., relative to the individual’s sleep/wake cycle), or the location of the individual at the times measurements were recorded. (The ability to find an individual in a time of acute medical need for medical services deployment is not specifically chronobiological in nature, but a history [time series] of location information might be useful in chronobiological healthcare analyses or chronobiological research.)
Platform-as-a-service capability might not have much applicability to the healthcare provider side of chronobiological healthcare, but would be useful if numerous organizations become involved in chronobiological/chronomic research. The chronobiology-specific cloud system could speed development of research tools by making available a platform of the basic tools along with computer programming languages or computer program development systems for building specialized research tools of interest.
A potentially more powerful application of cloud computing concepts to chronobiology/chronomics occurs at the software-as-a-service level. If software that performs chronobiological healthcare data collection and analyses is made available as a service, the “user interface” is separated from the core analysis and data storage mechanisms in a way that allows specialization of public services without the loss of efficiency usually associated with duplicate implementation of capabilities at the infrastructure and application software layers. Different implementations of websites for physicians with different specialties would be built upon the same software, tapping into capabilities that are useful for that specialty, but ignoring other capabilities, through customization and/or configuration. Customizable or configurable software services can be designed to ensure consistency and data integrity across a collection of applications that appear different to their users while using common algorithms and massive data storage, an important consideration in any system design with centralization (or at least standardization) as feature of major importance. Despite the different user interfaces, the system functions would still be available to all implementation at no extra development or operational cost.
For illustration, a simple example of a software service that might be made available at this level of abstraction would be a recording of and time-sensitive analysis of a stream of data. When used by a cardiologist, the time-sensitive analysis capability might note that a person’s heart rate has dropped below or has remained above acceptable preset values and automatically notify emergency medical personnel and/or care providers. The same time-sensitive analysis capability used by another physician to measure physical activity to encourage a patient to exercise more would most likely have the automatic notification capability configured off to prevent emergency personnel from being called just because the patient kept exercising. Yet both systems would be using the same software to record the primary data elements (heart rate or physical activity) along with secondary data elements typically useful for chronobiological analyses (e.g., timestamp, location), with the reasonable expectation that later data mining activities will be more useful without incurring extra cost.
Cloud systems have a risk that is somewhat unique: sharing of computing resources for efficiency (a major characteristic of cloud technology) can result in insufficient resources at a time of need. A critical healthcare system based on cloud technology that is expected to automatically deploy and guide emergency response personnel to patients in need during an epidemic could fail if, for example, it were sharing computing resources with computerized entertainment (e.g., movie delivery, shopping) systems that were also processing larger-than-average loads due to large segments of the population staying home from work and school. Non-cloud systems around the world already see such failures (e.g., telephone networks clogged with personal phone calls between worried family members during a natural disaster while emergency personnel try to use the same networks for coordination of resources and response); the cloud system architecture shares computing resources in a way that non-cloud system do not, introducing another potential failure point. Careful ‘disaster’ planning and testing can prevent this type of problem, and must explicitly be included in critical cloud system design and ongoing operation. One common mechanism to prevent resource problems is to negotiate a contractually-enforced priority system with the other users/owners of the shared computing resources, such that critical functions of a healthcare cloud system would be guaranteed computing resources in time of need.
The services provided in a cloud-based chronobiological healthcare system for China go beyond simply ‘Sensoring China.’ Collecting data from sensors is not particularly useful without also analyzing it. But it is not likely that all of the useful analysis services can be predicted in advance, presuming there are continued advancements in chronobiologic/chronomic research. Therefore, the chronobiological healthcare cloud system must be designed to evolve over time; it would be just too ironic for a chronobiology system to not have to adapt to the surrounding environment as it changes. The current state of computer hardware and software development is that such changes are painstakingly (and perhaps expensively) developed by engineers. The mechanics of such changes are usually straightforward (from an engineer’s point of view), but ensuring that a long-lived project has leaders with predictive vision that evolves and might not be so straightforward at the outset, and should be explicitly planned for in a national or international scale healthcare system.
23.3 Recent Findings and Events
In Kaluga, Russia, a statue was recently erected in honor of Chizhevsky (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfRyD-RmHrU), recognizing him as the pioneer of heliobiology in the pre-space era. He did not have the means (computers, inferential statistics, and satellites) for detecting and documenting the pervading transdisciplinary spectrum of solar, interplanetary, geo-, and biospheric cycles; yet he visionarily and eloquently described the very many consequences in the human mind and body of aeolian disappearing and/or reappearing nonphotic rhythms. We can honor his legacy if we extend the scope of one of our major summaries of this year’s synthesis (Fig. 23.5a) into many more personalized chronouspheres. We could all try to know ourselves, by recognizing an unseen strain, consisting in part of contributions by the cosmos, that like single, most of the time, not in themselves lethal, stimuli along the circadian scale also, can make the difference along infradian scales between death and survival, in the cases of human sudden cardiac death, suicide or crime, and terrorism. It has been shown in a circadian context that noises, such as the ringing of bells, and doses of drugs that are perfectly tolerated at one phase of a circadian cycle can kill a few hours earlier or later. The same likely applies to the effects of solar flares and magnetic storms in certain stages of the infradian susceptibility rhythms, as shown in Fig. 23.5a–c. The effects of the cosmos on mortality are currently forgotten by the Western scientific community at large, yet were prominent in data reported with the proper interpretation to the French Academy of Science by 1922. These data are meta-analyzed in Fig. 23.5d, documenting that sunspots are associated with an increase in mild or severe symptoms [16], including mortality [17]. The astronomer and philanthropist Joseph Vallot and the physicians Maurice Faure and Gaston Sardou [16, 17] made their discoveries concomitantly with Chizhevsky’s studies of the cosmos and human affairs [18, 19], including natality and mortality [20–25], which were confirmed in the 1930s by Traute and Bernhard Düll [26], among many others, notably in Russia [27], also in Israel by Eliahu Stoupel [28, 29], and much later by ourselves [30], with just two exceptions [31, 32] that can be anticipated in aeolian nonstationary phenomena [33].
Fig. 23.5
(a) Periods of cycles in eight persons with their uncertainties, CIs (95 % confidence intervals) shown as horizontal lines, detected by the nonlinearly extended cosinor, rejecting the assumption of “no rhythm” with the period fitted or one near it, extending the scope of a critical assortment of periods shown in Fig. 23.2a–c. Series from 15 up to 40 years in length assess the time structure of systolic (S) and diastolic (D) blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) and of metabolism (17-KS) of eight biomedical scientists, including six physicians, four of them under hypotensive treatment. Note cluster around 10 years, with a vertical shaded yellow band indicating Wolf numbers during the prior 100 years with their uncertainty and a vertical shaded green band giving the CIs of the period of the equatorial geomagnetic index Dst during the past 27 years, a rough illustration of environmental periods that we happened to have computed. The environmental counterparts of the span corresponding to each subject’s record are not shown here. Periods in the adult human circulation are aligned with those found in neonatal anthropometry in Fig. 23.5b © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (b) The graph in Fig. 23.5a is aligned with time series, including one of 110 years in length, on body weight, body length, and head circumference at birth, revealing, i.e., trans-semicentennian cycles (trans = beyond, i.e., longer than half a century, i.e., 50 years). © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (c) Histogram of nonrandom distribution of periods found in Fig. 23.5a, b showing a peak around 10 years. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (d) Solid evidence that solar magnetism (sunspots) can represent a stress resulting in enhanced symptoms quantifiable on a population basis was presented by 1922 [16, 17]. Severe symptoms included death. Self-surveillance, notably of systolic blood pressure (Fig. 23.2h), may detect this strain as a vascular variability anomaly (VVA) on an individualized basis. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (e) The about-1.3-year component of blood pressure and heart rate of GSK (M, 72–77 years of age) recorded during 1998–2003 has a period closer to the solar wind speed period characterizing the entire available record from the wind satellite than that for the concurrent 5-year span. Physiological variables may resonate with nonphotic environmental cycles that may have entered the genetic code during evolution. From Cornelissen et al. [34] © Halberg Chronobiology Center
At several meetings in 2012 in Moscow, Russia; Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia; and Houston, Texas, USA, Germaine Cornelissen and/or Larry Beaty demonstrated, in a pool of many transdisciplinary variables’ meta-analyses, cycles amenable to a cartography to be carried out globally and locally (we reemphasize glocally) in time, space, concept, and method. Culture, art, and science can benefit from a systematic mapping of the cycles in a chronousphere in and around us, representing surprisingly prominent putative signatures of the past as well as present behavior of the sun coded in our genes (Fig. 23.5e) [2, 13]. The pooling of the results of mapping that started with circadian cartography complements the findings in other meta-analyses of records from many long professional lifetimes of others’ productivity, e.g., that of Raymond Holder Wheeler [35], revealing decadal, multidecadal, and still longer cycles in various affairs relating to the health of human individuals and societies. R. B. Singh, professor of Cardiology in Moradabad, India, and emeritus president of the International Colleges of Cardiology and of Nutrition, demonstrated that a 7-day C-ABPM is feasible in outlying areas; his self-study of activity joined a distinguished list of scientist physicians who were both experimenters and probands in their research [36]. Diversity in space – genetics – developed by Johann Gregor Mendel in a pea patch in Brno, Czech Republic, now has a counterpart at St. Anna Hospital, also in Brno, under the guidance of Prof. MUDr. Jarmila Siegelova, whose hundreds of 7-day C-ABPM focus, as Prof. Singh did, on exercise chronomics, documenting, among others, that exercise at the wrong time can harm [37]. Jarmila’s yearly proceedings summarize our decade-long cooperation [38–47]. In 2012, our contributions from Minnesota were given by Skype. Germaine Cornelissen and Larry Beaty had a splendid resonance, as the following newspaper report conveys broader interest (http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contented=20121120143419).
23.4 Long-term Diverse Data Collection Opens Medical Frontiers
We were fortunate to have Lyazzat Gumarova of Almaty, Kazakhstan, join us for 2012. Her analyses of Chizhevsky’s data (e.g., Fig. 23.3a–c), her fluency in Russian, and her scholarship allowed us a new excursion into calendars in other areas of the world that recognized soli-lunar events and to the data or specifications in the contributions of Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky and Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky. She applied our glocal analyses which separately provide uncertainties for (global) spectra of a time series as a whole and for (local) serial sections to the treasure of data compiled in Russian. Lyazzat also contributed analyses of blood pressure and heart rate records collected in Kazakhstan by her colleague Dr. Almagul Mansharipova of the Kazakhstan-Russian Medical University in Almaty (Fig. 23.6a, b). Among the vascular variability anomalies (VVAs) detected in this population, circadian hyper-amplitude-tension (CHAT) deserves special scrutiny since it has been associated with a large increase in cardiovascular disease risk in several outcome studies. Its presence may also be a precursor of MESOR-hypertension, as shown in the experimental laboratory, clinical research, and practice (Fig. 23.6c).
Fig. 23.6
(a) Incidence of some vascular variability anomalies (VVAs) in about-24-hour ABPM records obtained in routine hospital practice during 2010–2012. Analysis by Lyazzat Gumarova © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (b) In a hospital population (Almaty), the proportion of patients found to be free of any vascular variability anomaly (VVA) is less than that of patients with a single VVA or multiple VVAs in an about-24-hour ABPM record. The complication of MESOR-hypertension by one or several VVAs was associated with an increased risk of an adverse event in an outcome study of 297 Japanese patients (insert) © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (c) Circadian hyper-amplitude-tension (CHAT), an excessive circadian amplitude of blood pressure, was observed to precede MESOR-hypertension in the experimental laboratory (left, experiments by Erna and Julia Halberg), in clinical research (middle, data from Dr Yuji Kumagai), and in clinical practice (right, data from Dr Yoshihiko Watanabe) © Halberg Chronobiology Center
We thank Stefano Sello of Enel Research, Pisa, Italy, for including wavelets of anthropometric data for orientation and comparison of time structures in space-terrestrial weather (Fig. 23.7a–c). We also thank Shiyu Hong for analyzing longitudinal blood pressure records (Fig. 23.7d) by adding glocal wavelets (Fig. 23.7e–h) and by comparing cross-wavelet coherences of the incidence of myocardial infarction and international terrorist acts with Wolf numbers as a gauge of solar activity (Fig. 23.7i). Figure 23.7a–i illustrates how wavelet analysis can be a useful addition to chronobiometry; albeit, it should not replace the combined local (gliding spectra) and global (linear-nonlinear least-squares spectra) rhythmometric analyses (Fig. 23.7j) and/or spectrograms (Fig. 23.7k, l), notably when they are also aligned with chronobiologic serial sections, as often done whenever the record is sufficiently long, as apparent from the appended update of our recent bibliography. Figure 23.7a–l shows the relative merits of wavelets and other procedures, emphasizing the need to use them in combination, notably when numerical estimates of uncertainties are required. Wavelets have been used, for instance, as building blocks to be included for quick orientation in a strain test, where part of the strain may be the unfavorable space weather. Paul J. Rosch, clinical professor of medicine and psychiatry at the New York Medical College and president of the American Institute of Stress and provocative author of regular interesting and candidly critical newsletters that report on how stress and strain relate to current health care, put this endeavor into a historical perspective [48] (as a former associate of Hans Selye) and may place it into the context of magnetism, to which he contributed his authoritative handbook covering the development of medico-biological aspects of that topic as well [49].
Fig. 23.7
(a) Morlet wavelets of the late Boris Nikityuk’s anthropometric data reveal time course, among others, of the signatures of long periods, including after 1930 a paratridecadal Brückner-Egeson-Lockyer (BEL) signature as well, that was missed by earlier analyses but could be ascertained when tested by the nonlinearly extended cosinor © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (b) Morlet wavelets reveal, in the antipodal geomagnetic index aa, the time course of periods centered on 5.4 ( 8–11.5) years and 31.5–44.0 years. Note the broad yellow band starting near the about-20-year Hale cycle and the near 30-year Brückner-Egeson-Lockyer (BEL) cycle, periodicities putatively associated in part with changes with long-term solar activity. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (c) With the particular time-frequency parameters used, an about-10- to about-11-year band is seen in group sunspot numbers [50, 51], but any paratridecadal trace is largely missed, a demonstration of the need for analyses with different time-frequency parameters and/or different methods. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (d) A circadian rhythm of systolic (I and III) and diastolic (II and IV) blood pressure of an elderly man (FH) is assessed by the fit of 24-hour cosine curves to data sections of 7 (I and II) and 28 (III and IV) days in order to assess anomalies in records smoothed so as to eliminate transients limited to a few days. Note the large red spot at the very end of row C, showing the recurrence of CHAT (brief for circadian hyper-amplitude-tension). Need for continued blood pressure monitoring: CHAT recurs after its long absence, even in smoothed 28-day records analyzed. Continuous monitoring is required once a vascular variability disorder (VVD), such as a high blood pressure, and/or a circadian overswing (CHAT) is diagnosed. It should be noted, however, that CHAT is only a risk factor, and hence there should be no dilemma in reconciling its presence in some subjects with their long survival, as is the case of FH. In some prospective clinical trials based on 48-hour ABPM, CHAT represented a risk of morbid cardiovascular event within 6 years numerically larger than hypertension. New trials are needed to determine the merit of reducing or eliminating CHAT in curbing adverse outcomes. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (e) Wavelets of systolic blood pressure of a 92-year-old man (FH) measured around the clock for 9 consecutive weeks in 2008, focusing on the circadian-circasemiseptan time structure. Data bracket the week of June 15–21 when the circadian amplitude was not prominent. Focus on extracircadian frequency anomalies is overdue but requires more longitudinal reference data in health. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (f) Wavelets of systolic blood pressure of a 92-year-old man (FH) measured around the clock for 8 consecutive weeks in 2011, focusing on the circadian-circasemiseptan time structure. Data bracket the week of June 21–27 when systolic CHAT was present. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (g) Wavelets of systolic blood pressure of an elderly man (FH) measured around the clock during 2004–2007 (with short interruptions), focusing on the circannual-circadiseptan time structure, could be automatically checked at any intervals prompted by as one-goes analyses. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (h) Wavelets of systolic blood pressure of an elderly man (FH) measured around the clock during 2008–2011 (with short interruptions), focusing on the circannual-circadiseptan time structure, could be automatically checked at any intervals prompted by as one-goes analyses. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (i) Cross-wavelet coherence with Wolf numbers (WN, gauging solar activity, top row) differs between the incidence of myocardial infarc tions in Minnesota (MI, middle row) and the incidence of international terrorist acts (TA, from the total Global Terrorism Database, bottom row). Whereas a low-frequency component is visible in the wavelet spectra of all three variables (left) and in the cross-wavelets of MI and TA with WN (middle), only MI (but not TA) shows coherence in this region. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (j). Global and gliding (local) spectrum of antipodal geomagnetic index, aa. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (k) Using a 16-year window, spectrograms of systolic blood pressure (top) and 1-minute time estimation (bottom) were obtained from 7-day averages of self-measurements 5 to 6 times a day by a clinically healthy man (RBS) collected over about 45 years. Whereas systolic blood pressure is primarily characterized by a prominent circannual variation, the time structure of 1-minute time estimation is less stable (more “aeolian”). A transyear with a period of about 1.2 to 1.3 years predominates over the circannual variation for 1-minute time estimation © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (l) Spectrograms of systolic blood pressure are compared between RBS and his parents. Data analyzed are 7-day averages of self-measurements taken about 5 to 6 times a day by RBS and twice a day (morning and evening) by his parents, collected over about 45 years (RBS), 29 years (RBS’s father), and 20 years (RBS’s mother). Using the same 10-year window bracketing the calendar year, differences are readily seen among the three records: RBS has a sturdy and stable circannual variation. The calendar year is accompanied by a near-transyear in his father’s record. His mother’s record shows a slightly desynchronized but stable year at the beginning of the record, but with a period starting to lengthen later on to become a near-transyear © Halberg Chronobiology Center
Automatic passes over the accumulating data from sections of decade-long C-ABPM have already served to track the coming, going, and reappearing VVAs such as CHAT (Fig. 23.7d) to summarize endeavors toward eliminating them, which were only transiently successful, as can be seen within graphs by the appearance and recurrence of red denoting the undesirable condition. With wavelets, Fig. 23.7e–h explores the extracircadian domain in an elderly man. For anomalies to be detected therein, a first focus is possible in the ultradian and up to about a circasemiseptan region of the spectrum (Fig. 23.7e, f), but reference values need to be collected before any, e.g., cis-half-yearly anomalies can be defined and diagnosed in the extracircadian range. Figure 23.7g, h models future automatic yearly screenings, or screenings at other intervals, with a length depending on the number of cycles required in health to reliably assess a given (e.g., infradian) component of interest, such as a quinmensal, which, along with a transyear, is reflected in sudden cardiac death as well as in cardiovascular variables and also, as we found out on ourselves, in wrist activity (Table 23.1 ).
Table 23.1
About-5-month cycles (quinmensals)a and a candidate far-transyear in human motor (wrist) activity
Period, τ (years, y) | Amplitude (countc) | % of 24-hour amplitude |
|---|---|---|
Days, d, CIb | ||
OS, F, 89 y of age at start of study | ||
0.7728 y (0.6675, 0.8781) | 0.459 (0.145, 0.773) | 9.50 |
0.4160 y (0.3664, 0.4655) | 0.305 (0.024, 0.585) | 6.31 |
0.2324 y (0.2125, 0.2522) | 0.252 (−0.01, 0.515) | 5.22 |
24.00 hour | 4.83 (4.58, 5.09) | – |
GC, F, 59 y of age at start of study | ||
0.4100 y (0.3920, 0.4279) | 0.555 (0.389, 0.721) | 9.07 |
24.00 hour | 6.12 (5.95, 6.29) | – |
FH, M, 92 y of age at start of study | ||
1.860 y (1.527, 2.193) | 0.990 (0.806, 1.170) | 18.00 |
0.4536 y (0.4179, 0.4892) | 0.481 (0.275, 0.687) | 8.75 |
0.3367 y (0.3237, 0.3496) | 0.699 (0.493, 0.905) | 12.71 |
24.00 hour | 5.50 (5.30, 5.70) | – |
We continued to learn with and from the Japanese team of Dr. Kuniaki Otsuka, Professor, Tokyo Women’s Medical University, and President, Daini Hospital, Tokyo, with the data covering invariably 7 days/person continuing to come from the cities of Uraus and Tosa where he implemented what former Roseville Mayor Dan Wall visualized for Minnesota (but his successor did not continue) as a prehabilitation of the elderly by detecting VVAs by C-ABPM and treating them properly (Fig. 23.8a, b) in applying such goals of chronobiology and chronomics in elders’ everyday life [52–56].
Fig. 23.8
(a) Top left: Prehabilitation, preferably before as well as after or with rehabilitation. By the early detection of disease risk syndromes in the individual patient, countermeasures for primary prevention can be instituted, whether by non-pharmacologic or pharmacologic means. Top right: For prehabilitation, the development of affordable, unobtrusive instrumentation for monitoring blood pressure and heart rate is needed, as are databases of records in health combined with outcomes from prospective and/or retrospective trials for a chronobiologic interpretation of the results and, when needed, for treatment optimized by timing (chronotherapy), preferably adjusted to the individual patient, accounting for the chronodiagnosis (chronotheranostics). Such a chronomic approach provides the tools serving both prehabilitation and rehabilitation. Bottom right: Chronomics helps quantify elements of chronomes (multifrequency rhythms, chaos, and trends) in us and around us. Bottom left: Applications of chronomes extend focus to include along with rehabilitation (left part), prehabilitation, i.e., the timely institution of prophylactic measures (right part). © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (b) Top: Closing the loop between diagnostic and therapeutic devices via chronobiology may lead to chronomedicine. The addition of a memory for data storage and for chronobiologic data analysis as one goes, according to the principles of (repeated passes for) windowing (i.e., analyses in spectral regions of progressively lower frequencies), compacting (in the form of the characteristics of the rhythm with the just-analyzed frequency), and recycling for the analyses on longer and longer series and the (preferably automatic) interpretation of the results, in the light of time-specified reference standards, could provide a bridge between monitoring endeavors aimed at screening, diagnosis and prognosis, and instrumentation for the delivery of treatment. In thus closing the diagnostic and therapeutic loops, a step could be made toward the online optimization of treatment by timely and timed treatment according to rhythms. Bottom: Investment into physiological monitoring and education in chronobiology, to detect warning signs indicative of an elevated risk, rather than only of the fait accompli of disease, can prompt preventive intervention with the goal of avoiding the crippling of catastrophic diseases, also a major drain of financial resources. By placing added emphasis on prevention, health-care costs could decrease, while the quality of care is improved. © Halberg Chronobiology Center
It is a pleasure to plan with our new (Yinjing Guo, Dean and Professor, Shandong University of Science and Technology) and long-time (Jinyi Wu and his son Bing Wu) colleagues in the People’s Republic of China to bring chronobiologic/chronomic health care to their country. They aim to establish a chrono-cloud system and to deliver chronobiologically interpreted services into Chinese community health care, as originally scheduled (Fig. 23.4c), yet possibly in a broader perspective (Fig. 23.4d).
BIOCOS welcomes Dr. Abdullah al-Abdulgader, director of the Prince Sultan Cardiac Center in Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia, and the organizer of King of Organs cardiology conferences. On Paul Rosch’s advice, he gave chronobiology a prominent place and a full day of lectures on his program and had a special symposium on chronomics on another day. From his hospital, 7-day records of C-ABPM are already being contributed to BIOCOS on a scale that we trust he can enlarge. Abdullah monitors nearby magnetic activity and heart rate variability in his setting, as a station of an international coherence project guided by Dr. Rollin McCraty (Director of Research, Institute of HeartMath, Boulder Creek, California), who initiated such combined monitoring, and plans on doing this continuous surveillance of “coherence” among people on a large scale. In Rollin’s data, we have already found nonphotic signatures [57], among other results [58–61]. Gravitational recording is the main task of Prof. Elchin Khalilov, head of the project on geocataclysms [62], who came to the Al Ahsa meeting. His worldwide activity aimed at predicting earthquakes could take the lead in an international chronomic alerting system, from alignment with BIOCOS, considered in Saudi Arabia if not in Azerbaijan, and preferably in both locations.
Like a group of scholars at Princeton University, we ask, also like Rollin, about any effect on the environment exerted by the feelings and emotions of large groups of people and vice versa, a topic considered further by Hans Wendt (Prof.psychol.em., Prof. sc. nat. [hon.], A.v. Humboldt Behavioral Geomedicine, St. Paul, Minnesota), who in turn found a putative effect of the reaction of masses of people to stirring events entangled with the cosmos (Fig. 23.9a–c) [63]. The effect of human emotions has to be disentangled from that of the cosmos [64].
Fig. 23.9
(a) Correlations with a gauge of the polarity of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) and deviations from randomness “entangled” with “violence from below,” qualified by lack of consideration for periodicity in the phenomena assessed. Approach and analyses by Hans W. Wendt. (b) Scatterplots of deviation from randomness vs. IMF polarity “entangled” with the incidence of accidents and other catastrophes. Approach and analyses by Hans W. Wendt. (c) Inward-directed acts such as meditation and prayer in the context of a putative correlation between the output of random event generators and the interplanetary magnetic field of borderline and otherwise qualified statistical significance. Approach and analyses by Hans W. Wendt
Cycles characterize both gravity and magnetism and can be monitored as such to seek information on whether and, if so, what seems likely, how both these unseen features of our environment interact, if indeed their effects can be separated. It was therefore a pleasure for Abdullah to welcome Acad. Elchin Khalilov (Chairman, InterGeoTethys, Baku, Azerbaijan) with the possibility of adding gravitational to biological and magnetic surveillance. Abdullah, Elchin, and Rollin willing, these endeavors could lead, in combination with BIOCOS, to an international alerting system to better understand and avoid natural and social cataclysms, with the very data accumulating as harbingers prompting action to prevent personal adverse cardiovascular events. In this context, endeavors from the Phoenix Study Group, composed of volunteering members of the Twin Cities chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (http://www.phoenix.tc-ieee.org), founded and maintained by Ellis Nolley with Larry Beaty’s outstanding activities [65–67] and with Chris Adams’ broad scenarios [68], are promising. A chronomic data center (corne001@umn.edu) at the University of Minnesota has been analyzing presently accumulating as well as published data (Figs. 23.3a–e, 23.6a–b, and 23.7a–i), and the wherewithal for the broader implementation of this activity is part of the endeavor visualized by El, Larry, and Chris and worked on in the laboratory with engineering students by Larry.
The year 2012 continued to show the palliative success of Vera Brandes’ SANOSON music therapy (Fig. 23.10a) in a case of twice-yearly depression where drugs had failed for two decades [69]. Patient/investigator Mrs. Judy Finley documented the wrangling of several coexisting periods in her cardiovascular system, mental state, and 11,702 endocrine determinations (on the same person) of six hormones sampled at 4-hour intervals around the clock along with other variables (Fig. 23.10b and Table 23.2 ). For Judy, it was possible to demonstrate a double tidal period in variables as different as self-ratings of vigor (twice), urine volume, and heart rate (Fig. 23.10c) in the computer output (not input). In the wrangling of her coexisting components, the double tidal period has the larger amplitude (wins) during episodes of depression in alternation with a larger 24-hour amplitude between episodes of adynamia. Judy’s many contributions thus far constitute a major investment by her into science as well as health and so are the many chemical and numerical analyses. We hope she resumes vascular, urine, wrist activity, and possibly salivary surveillance with self-ratings of mood and vigor.
Fig. 23.10
(a) Listening to specially composed music (SANOSON) alleviates, for at least 1 hour, adynamic depressive symptoms of a selenosensitive woman (JF) with depression episodes lasting 2–3 months at a time, recurring twice yearly for the past 21 years. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (b) Wrangling between the double tide on the one hand and society/solar light and temperature on the other hand in JF’s endocrines as in her circulation, with the pull of the double tides lengthening the dominant circadian period during depression. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (c) The heart rate of JF exhibits a double tidal period in the computer output (not input) of analysis. © Halberg Chronobiology Center. (d) Several circadian and circasemidian components characterize the rest-activity schedule of a healthy man (JC) on a self-selected routine. In addition to a 24-hour synchronized component, an about-24.8-hour (double tidal) component is present together with an about-24.4-hour cycle (compromise between earth and moon?) and an about-24.2-hour (free-running?) component, all resolved by linear-nonlinear cosinor. © Halberg Chronobiology Center
Table 23.2
Recorded recurrent adynamia. Start-end dates and length (weeks) of spans of adynamia when recorded in winter (W) and summer (S). f: date of full moon; n: date of new moon
2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
W | – | 01.18 f 02.17 f (4) | 01.12 02.20 n (5) | 01.05 02.15 (5) | 12.25 n 02.14 n (7) | 01.03 f 03.03 f (8) | 01.08 n 02.21 f (6) | 12.26 n 02.23 n (8) | 01.02 f 02.28 f (8) | 01.04 n 03.05 n (8) | 01.04 05.15 (18) |
S | 06.09 08.07 (8) | 06.15 f 08.12 f (8) | 06.17 n 08.18 n (8) | 06.20 f 08.09 (7) | 06.04 08.28 (11) | 05.31 f 08.12 n (10) | ? 08.18 f (?) | 06.09 f 08.08 f (8) | 07.08 09.16 (10) | 07.07 09.13a (10) | 07.03 09.22 (11) |
Dr. John Costella’s data during the 3 years on a self-selected activity/rest span are long enough and sufficiently consistent on a relatively societally independent living routine to allow the concomitant demonstration of four coexisting periods in the same healthy person [70] (Table 23.3 and Fig. 23.10d), including components related to lunar tides. From his own analysis of his sleep record, he concluded, as a physical scientist, that he was selenosensitive. The 24.00-hour predominates over the also prominent 24.84-hour period and that the latter’s amplitude is less than one half of that of the societal-solar period. The statistically significant tidal period of 12.41 hours also has a smaller amplitude than the 12.0-hour period in John. He deserves credit for demonstrating, if not multiple oscillators necessarily, than coexisting multiple circadians in health in sleep-wakefulness. Multiple coexisting circadian oscillators have been documented in plants [71] and considered broadly [72] and should be extended not only to the extracircadian domain but also to seek and examine environmental coperiodisms. Against this background of several coexisting circadian periods in depression [73] and in selenosensitive health on a self-selected routine of living, non-24-hour sleep disorder can be viewed [74, 75]. The question could be asked whether, given long time series of months or years, allowing their resolution, an effect of several circadian periods, including double tidal periods and compromise periods, should be sought. Isolation studies in caves have yielded compromise periods about halfway between 24.00 and 24.84 hours [76–79] or, outright, the double tidal period [80, 81]. Noteworthy in this context is the finding of a very tiny peak at 24.8 hours in health on a societal routine during 45 years in a clinically healthy man’s (RBS) vigor, who had been studied in Rütger Wever’s bunker [82], where his oral temperature in our meta-analyses showed a double tidal period. In RBS’ 44.5-year record of self-rated vigor, the 24.00-hour component has an amplitude, A, of 1.0, while that at 24.8 hours has an A of 0.018; yet, the point estimate of neither A has a CI (95 % confidence interval) overlapping zero. If it is not an artifact of very large numbers (this will be checked further) and if this component is found in a few other variables of RBS and/or in other subjects, it would lead to tests of the hypothesis that the effect of the double tides is ever present at least in one variable in some other individuals. This is in keeping with a near-tidal component in another subject (FH) with decade-long data (Table 23.4). A tidal or double tidal component, even if minuscule, could lead to “butterfly effects” that can struggle with and can overcome societal effects but coexists as an added component.
Table 23.3
Periods, amplitudes, and acrophasesa found in sleep-wakefulness on a largely self-selected schedule by JCb
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